For a number of years manufacturers of promotional merchandise have been subject to more and more stringent safety testing processes. The following 5 tips in this article explain how to make sure that any promotional items you supply will pass these tests.
1.Get to know your local testing laboratory
Getting to know your local product safety testing laboratory is an important step in the whole process. Even if your local lab does not have a lot of experience in testing promotional merchandise there are manuals and procedures that are used globally to ensure consistency in testing. Once they have performed tests on a few promotional items for you they will get to know how you work, what requirements the industry needs and things become much easier.
2. Investigate which specific tests will be needed for each product.
Different tests for different promotional items are required and a lot depends upon where they will end up going. A good example might be promotional bottled water or even leather conference folders. It’s not just the water that would need testing for any impurities, the bottle would need to be checked to make sure it is safe from any dangerous substances. And you may be surprised to learn that the label would be checked as well.
3. Discover as much as you can about all the entire testing process
When you are making a new product from scratch it helps enormously if you know what likely tests are to be carried out on the item so that you design out any faults. Let’s take a couple of hypothetical products such as a promotional radio or a weather station powered by electricity. The testing requirements for these two items would be completely different to the former products. Another similar example could be promotional clothing and say promotional jackets in particular. These items would require colour fast testing for the fabrics much the same would be the case for embroidered polo shirts, printed T-shirts and any other sorts of corporate clothing.
4. Find out about labels for products
Product labelling is another area that is really important when it comes to safety testing. You must ensure that each promotional gift you give away has been correctly identified for the target audience. There are labels for every promotional product that you can think of and if they can’t go onto the actual item itself, say in the case of a small promotional keyring, then they go on to the plastic bag that it is supplied in.
5. Attend as many training courses as you can
Do not ever take any chances with safety testing, it could cost someone their life and you your liberty. On-line courses are now available, they are inexpensive and will cover the basics but they will never be as good as face to face courses. If you belong to a local trade organisation they may be able to help. If you have no luck there then try the local library or the trading standards authority who deal with this subject on a daily basis.
BTC Group screen print and embroider hundreds of thousands of different pieces of Promotional Clothing every year. To see how they do it why not watch a short Video and see why this great company is so successful.